The grainy cellphone footage was taken by Cote's girlfriend's sister and starts midway through the arrest. It shows the family's dog Duke lying on the grass when an officer calls out, "Get a shotgun to put this dog down." Another officer then approaches the dog with a shotgun and shoots him from a few feet away as the person filming cries for her pet.

In their original statement following the arrest in 2014, the Mounties said the dog had been aggressive and was "shot and killed after it attacked the RCMP Police Service Dog."

The Saskatchewan RCMP released another statement this week after dozens of messages on their Facebook page calling them "dog killers."

"After the initial firearm discharge, the wounded dog was lying in the grass injured and out of compassion was euthanized by the RCMP member," reads the statement.

The family disputes that Duke behaved aggressively.

Justine O'Soup, Cote's girlfriend, told CBC News the police overreacted and that Duke could still have been saved, despite being injured.

"Duke wasn't acting aggressive," she said. "Even if my dog was attacking the [police] dog, shooting him seven times in the body isn't the way to handle it. It's cruel the way they shot him. Why did my dog have to die?"

O'Soup has filed a formal complaint against the RCMP over the incident.

Tom Stamatakis, the president of the Canadian Police Association, says cops generally follow the National Use of Force Model for encounters with aggressive pets.

"Their response is really determined by what they see or what they perceive as a threat," Stamatakis told BuzzFeed Canada. "Typically the guidance is to use the least amount of force that you can in order to be effective, but the amount of force that will be effective."

As for whether to put an injured animal down, departments will have their own guidelines. In most urban areas police officers would call animal control, Stamtakis said, but in rural areas that may not always be possible.

"Some of the things that would be considered are how seriously the animal is injured, are there other resources available to deal with the animal, or is it so grievously injured that it has to be euthanized?"

Ishmael Daro is a social news editor for BuzzFeed and is based in Toronto.